Whether I want to admit it or not, I did learn a lot in school. Two plus two does equal four, and I comes before E except after C, and when they make an A sound. I learned more complex things, but they aren’t coming to mind right now. However, I have noticed that not everything I learned in school is true, or even a good thing. Pi r squared is a common formula, but it is only true in math, pies are round. Evolution, though taught as fact, is still just a theory. But those aren’t what I’ve been thinking about. There is something I learned to do in school that was acceptable, still is to a point, but has the potential to be abused.

In elementary school, and a little less in high school, I had to write portfolio entries. Papers that would travel with me through school to prove I was improving. Some were subject based, others were personal stories. I know they had a valid purpose, but I wasn’t fond of them. Looking back, they taught me one thing, how to be fake.

Before you get the wrong idea, I didn’t lie in what I wrote, though I might have gotten details wrong on accident. What I wrote was true to the best of my then current knowledge. The fake I mean is in the style and length I was supposed to write those papers. I had to fluff them up; that’s what the teachers said was expected.

I still add fluff from time to time, using a large word when a small one would do. I don’t know that there is an harm in doing that, except when I get hit for being a smart aleck. But that “skill” can be carried over to a part of my life that can cause harm. I could try to carry that over to my spiritual life so that others think I am better than I am.

I have been trained to say the same thing, but take longer to do it. That could be misconstrued into say something that sounds better, and hide it behind fancy words. That’s is not something that anyone needs to learn.